Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Tenacity
     … So, prepare a place where you can sit down and stay for a long period of time with as much ease as you can manage, because we’re here to see things in the mind, and the best way to see subtle things in the mind is to be as still as possible, so that the slightest disturbance, the slightest movement, will be clear … 
  3. Moral Intelligence
     … There’s that line of thought that says, “Well, I’ve stacked up all this merit and all this goodness, so I can afford a little slack time.” That doesn’t work, because the slack time in the mind starts leading to slack behavior and you have to fight to get back to where you were. Once the mind is in good shape, try … 
  4. There’s Work to Be Done
     … So, as we get the mind to settle down, we’re trying to unwind some of that tension. But it’s still work. It’s like a big ball of rubber bands. Some rubber bands are easier to pull off; others are more entangled. After all, as you get the mind to settle down, things should open up inside. But there are parts of … 
  5. The Path to Stream Entry
     … And the cause comes from within the mind. Basically what it’s saying is that whatever is caused by the mind is going to cease. That insight appears spontaneously when you’ve seen something that’s not caused by the mind, and it doesn’t cease. Whereas, everything else that was caused by the mind does cease in that experience. Which is why you … 
  6. Invest in the Breath
     … If things get too still in the mind, you blank out. If they’re not still enough, you don’t see things clearly. It’s when you have the sense of just right that your discernment gets exercised, and you can start seeing deeper and deeper and deeper into the mind: levels of attachment that are very subtle but very tenacious. Things you never … 
  7. The Essence of the Dhamma
     … in other words, taking delight in developing skillful qualities of the mind and delight in abandoning unskillful ones. This is one area where you don’t just rest content with what you’ve got. You’re always trying to improve things in the mind. The Buddha himself said that part of the secret of his gaining awakening was that he didn’t rest content … 
  8. Skill
     … As you get more sensitive to issues of skill and lack of skill around the breath, you begin to see them in the mind as well. There are skillful qualities in the mind, unskillful qualities in the mind. The more you pursue this question, the more you begin to sense which is which. Some ways of thinking, some attitudes, some intentions lead to short … 
  9. Confident, Steadfast, Resolute
     … You want to have the mind leap up at the prospect of what we’re doing. You want it to be confident. And the confidence here, you may find, has to be adjusted as you get more familiar with what’s going on in the breath, what’s going on in the mind. But you won’t know until you say, “I’m just … 
  10. The Riddle Tree
     … So in that case, it’s going to be important to gain insight into the nature of feeling just to get the mind to settle down. This is how discernment fosters concentration. The typical pattern, of course, is that concentration fosters discernment. But as the Buddha said at one point, to get the mind to settle down to good strong concentration you need both … 
  11. Thinking & Evaluating
     … When, as right now, you’re trying to get the mind quiet, they’re not going to be helpful, because they’re going to pull away from what you’re trying to do here—at least what part of the mind is trying to do. What this means is that the level of thinking you have to do to get the mind into right … 
  12. Metta Can Hurt
    To get the mind to stay in concentration, you need an object that you like, and this will be a very personal, individual matter. Some people like the breath. Some people find that the mind can settle down really well when thinking of the different parts of the body. Some like to repeat a word like buddho or dhammo or sangho, and some like … 
  13. Decisions
     … That task is to get the mind to be as stable and clear as possible in the present moment so that you can see even more clearly what you’re doing. It’s a process of developing sensitivity. The more you watch the movements of the mind and the breath, the more familiar they become. As they become more familiar you start seeing subtleties … 
  14. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
    For the mind to settle down, you have to find something it likes, something it finds engaging. This is entirely up to you. If it’s the breath, what kind of breathing do you like? Where do you like to focus on the breath? What kind of perception of the breath helps you settle down? This is something you have to evaluate for yourself … 
  15. Skillful Fears
     … being harmful, and the mind states that would make you act on the desire to be harmful. This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to find something really solid inside that’s not threatened by anything outside at all. Because it’s usually through weakness that we tend to do unskillful things. So the mind needs to be strengthened, and there are … 
  16. Pride in Your Craft
     … The mind that’s still is the mind that can see clearly what’s working and what’s not. And it has a clear idea of what it means to “work” because you’re getting more and more sensitive to the movements of the mind and also to the different levels of stress in the mind. You begin to see that there are fluctuations … 
  17. Remembering Ajaan Lee
     … There are two other qualities that need to be brought together with the mindfulness to make it do its work. One is alertness, when you’re actually watching what you’re doing, and you keep referring back to the mind. You look at the breath, say, but you’re also keeping track of the mind. How is the mind staying with the breath? The … 
  18. Stop Squirming
     … But fortunately, that’s not the stress or suffering that weighs the mind down. If it were, there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it. What really weighs the mind down is the stress of the four noble truths: the stress that comes from craving and ignorance. And that’s a cause you can do something about. You can replace ignorance with … 
  19. In the Present
     … He says, one, you clearly see what’s happening, particularly in the mind. That’s where you want to focus. And then two, you do your duty with regard to what’s coming up in the mind. So there’s something you actually do. And when the Buddha talks about being in the present, it’s always in the context of heedfulness: If you … 
  20. Delight in Persistence
     … So we’re developing a strength of the mind here, the strength of persistence. We find that we’re learning things that may seem little to begin with, minor minutia, but they open up a lot of bigger issues in the mind. After all, your relationship to pain is something that’s been murky for a long time. You first encountered pain when? In … 
  21. Effortlessness Through Effort
     … It becomes automatic because you’ve gone through all the problems, and you’ve gotten really good at solving the problems that the mind keeps churning out. You see why the mind goes for particular thoughts—and the insight has to go into the particulars. You can’t just say, “I’m attracted to this thought because of greed, or because of anger, or … 
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